gluten-free healing ala GAPS, paleo and nourishing traditions

What came first: the nutrition or the love?

This morning: woke up when kids did. Groggily checked my handy menu plan. Realized it was pumpkin muffins and sauteed apples for breakfast. Which was a little funny because when I made that menu up I for sure thought I would make those muffins ahead of time so that we’d roll out of bed, warm up the muffins, sautee the apples, and…. Breakfast!

That did not happen. Clearly.

Soo…. I stuck to the plan and made everything while they did their various things as they waited for me. Namely:
laying at my feet,
wrapping their arms around my legs,
playing in the kitchen drawer as I try to grab things to make breakfast(!) for them(!) quickly(!),
chatting away like it’s mid-day instead of the sacred hour of EARLY, where silence is revered and muted voices are the right religion.
It’s like they don’t know they need to have their coffee before they’re allowed to talk like that. Why they haven’t learned that from my every-morning-demonstration, I don’t know.

It all went pretty well for the first bit. But while we were waiting those last minutes for the muffins, things went south. Way south. I don’t blame them- normally breakfast is ready pretty quickly around here to avoid that blood-sugar-crash-induced-whining that I was experiencing so pointedly. For a while I was my normal self, trying to be kind and clear. And then my patience seemed to run out the same way my kids just had and it was one big mess of loud voices trying to mute out whining ones. And then tears. And then me setting down cutlery much more loudly than necessary and storming back to the kitchen.

So it obviously was a disaster.

Happily, we mended things. And then we had a great morning together. But the point to myself is: providing good nutrition to my children isn’t above acting with love towards them. What would the point of that be?

Several years ago I was reading through a book by Christian Northrup. She wrote that it’s more important for a child to be in a loving home than in one with perfect nutrition. I’ve always agreed with that, but I think used it as an excuse sometimes for letting them have things regularly that I knew weren’t good for them. And so I have to balance that idea with: a loving environment IS one that considers where their little bodies are at and what they need to thrive.